EagleView’s High-Tech Response to Natural Disasters: Capturing Devastation from Above

EagleView produces high-resolution images in the wake of disasters

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

Soon after two powerful and devastating hurricanes, Helene and Milton, struck Florida within weeks of each other last fall, data analytics company EagleView Technologies was on the scene, capturing high-resolution aerial images of the destruction to aid recovery efforts and assist in processing insurance claims.

 

In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida’s Big Bend region before traveling inland, bringing widespread catastrophic damage and causing numerous fatalities across the southeastern United States. That storm was followed several weeks later by Hurricane Milton, the second-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded over the Gulf of Mexico, which struck Florida’s Gulf coast south of Tampa Bay, leaving a path of destruction as it traveled across the peninsula.

For EagleView CEO Piers Dormeyer, responding to the aftermath of the twin storms was a personal experience.

“I live in St. Petersburg. So, we were actually kicked right out the house for almost a month because those storms hit the Tampa/St. Pete area back to back,” he said.

The different nature of the two storms led to different impacts and elicited a different response from EagleView’s team. “The Helene storm was largely a flooding event across Florida, especially coastal Florida, and then even worse in the Carolinas,” Dormeyer said. “Milton was much more of a windstorm. It came in perpendicular to the coast with very high winds hitting populated areas.” The high winds were so intense that they blew the stadium roof off of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg.

Using planes and unmanned aerial systems, EagleView was soon hard at work, recording high-resolution images for its customers, which included state and local officials and insurance companies. In responding to hurricanes, unlike with other natural disasters, companies such as EagleView have time to plan and prepare, so that they can have the right assets in place to respond to the disaster scene quickly, Dormeyer said.

As those storms are developing, company officials have as much as a week ahead landfall to plan their response strategy. “We have meteorologists on staff that are really trying to understand the range of possibilities,” he said. “We’re getting an operational group together a couple times a day to really assess what it is that we’re going to need and really understanding the needs of our customers.”

Working with county officials in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in Florida, as well as local officials in the Carolinas, EagleView’s teams developed their disaster response plans, deciding on what assets – planes or drones – were most appropriate for the job.

“We’re trying to understand what’s most important to them: is speed of data important or is it the high-resolution data that’s more important? That can really change based on the nature of the storm,” he said. “With a weaker storm, for example, you might want to have higher-resolution data. That might take longer to get that because you’ve got to fly lower altitudes, etc.  But that’s necessary when you’re not dealing with a total-loss situation and you’re looking for more detail, so that you can triage certain characteristics.”

Dormeyer said this ability to anticipate the customers’ needs has been a critical piece for planning the company’s respond to current disasters, such as the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires.

“We start looking at what are the assets that we have at our disposal, the types of planes, the drones,” he said. Once this analysis is complete, the company decides on what tools are best to deploy to accomplish the mission at hand.

In the case of the California wildfires, Dormeyer said EagleView already has the resources in place – with aviation assets positioned to the north, south and east of the disaster area — to begin recording the devastation as soon as its safe for the company to do so.

“We’re just waiting for some smoke to clear so that we can get in and get very high-quality, high-resolution imagery,” he said. The company is working closely with the FAA, which must first lift the temporary flight restrictions the agency has imposed in the fire-affected areas.

In addition to other obstacles it is likely to encounter in the California disaster, EagleView also has to contend with the loss of internet service in many areas. In these areas, the company will have to establish portable internet links in order for it to be able to share its data with first responders battling the blazes.

“It really just culminates with us delivering data into the hands of the people that are working that event,” Dormeyer said.

Over the last several days EagleView representatives have been working with Los Angeles County officials to coordinate the company’s response to the disaster. In a January 9 interview, Dormeyer described the company’s response plans.

“We actually just got off a call with one of the program managers who is responsible for data in L.A. County who called us and said, ‘Hey, we can’t wait to get your information. We’re not getting access to imagery. All we can see is smoke. So, we know that you guys are going to give us something we can actually use,’”

In addition, EagleView’s team members are working with other emergency response organizations in the area, such as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). “They can help us understand where the smoke’s going so that we can better plan our routes and do our flight planning so we can get that information as quickly as possible,” Dormeyer said.

Company deploys both manned and unmanned aircraft

EagleView’s employs a large fleet of planes that helps the company capture high-resolution aerial photographic images, which are then processed into ortho-mosaics with high degrees of resolution and accuracy. Combined with artificial intelligence tools, this GIS (Geographic Information Systems)-quality data can be used to conduct in-depth analysis and to create models used across a variety of industries including solar, roofing, real estate and insurance.

In addition to its use of manned aircraft, EagleView employs a wide variety of drones to accomplish various aspects of its mission, everything from larger-format fixed-wing drones that can be used to cover areas encompassing multiple square miles on a single battery charge, to smaller drones.

Such small UAVs proved useful in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, where they were operated to conduct house-by-house data-collection flights in the Siesta Key area, where the hurricane made landfall. Many of these units are produced by Skydio, and are equipped with machine-learning technology, which can aid in structural damage assessment.

Although the company has the ability to deploy any type of drone hardware within its system, Dormeyer said that since the company works so closely with a number of government agencies, many of its customers prefer the use of U.S.-produced drones, such as Skydio products.

He said the growth of its post-disaster business is a direct outgrowth of the company’s expertise in high-quality image productions and analysis. “For example, we can measure and understand the impact of a storm on a structure,” he said. “Unfortunately, the last six months have been really busy for us in this space.”

Want DRONELIFE news delivered to your inbox every weekday?  Sign up here.

Read more:

• Drone Tools for the Roofing Industry: EagleView Assess
• Drone Based Roofing Inspections: Zeitview Expands Software Platform
• Rising Above the Storm: How Drones Are Revolutionizing NYC;s Disaster Response 12 Years After Hurricane Sandy

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.